Mississippi by Bob Dylan; or How I Learned to Stop Worrying…

Bob Dylan has been a massive part of my life for a while and I think we can all name at least one song he has sung. Whether it be from the protest days of “Blowin’ in the Wind” or from the Gospel Era with “Property of Jesus”. Bob Dylan has had a profound impact on the world of music and how we see songwriting today. I never thought that a song could actually change my life so much that I would begin to question what kind of person I was, but here I am today - a changed human being because of one folk song.

I was in university and I had by then, been listening to Bob Dylan sporadically for a while, analysing songs, reading books etc. on his music and songwriting skill. A few years later, he would win the Nobel Prize for Literature in 2016 and everyone would be stunned at the man who came from nothing in a small town in Minnesota to beat the likes of people who had degrees in writing and literature from prestigious backgrounds. The album “Love And Theft” always caught my eye because the “and” was capitalised and the title had quotation marks around it. Without looking it up, I would always question why that was. I would listen to the entire album on repeat, sobbing against Dylan’s sad-boy blues on “Sugar Baby” and enjoying some alone time to “Lonesome Day Blues”. But the one song that changed me was “Mississippi” and it has come to become my favourite Bob Dylan song of all time today.

The reason it changed me was because shortly after Bob Dylan won the Nobel Prize for Literature, I left my undergraduate degree, graduating with a BA in Literature and Writing - I was going to study Film at a prestigious university for my MA. My problem was that none of my friends were coming with me and unbeknownst to me, I’d never see any of them ever again.

I left my BA with my degree in my hand, a smile on my face and a bunch of photographs to remember some of the best people I had ever known. But when I entered my MA, I found myself dreadfully alone. I would sit on the windowsill of the cafeteria and eat my lunch since people told me to move from their table. I wouldn’t be able to walk into the university campus restaurant without being stared at and whispered about or laughed at. I even had something thrown at me once and someone pushed me against a door to get me out of the way. Needless to say, I hadn’t done anything, I was just an easy target to these people who called themselves ‘liberals’. I was on the verge of giving up and all I wanted to do was get out of there.

“Mississippi” was a song I really needed at that time and it took me some time to realise why. Throughout my writing classes when I took Film for my MA, I always had one problem and that was having people read my work. Sometimes I’d write an experimental poem and turn it into a script. Nobody got it and the lecturer would tell me I was stupid even though the marker would give me over 70% of a score. “Mississippi” has the most intriguing lyrics and if it weren’t for that song, I don’t think I would’ve finished my MA.

The way in which the song starts is something magical. It was something I could relate to and it was something that nobody else knew about me. When they found out I was into Bob Dylan, everyone was trying to be my friend but, by then it was too late. I was friends with this song and it was all I needed. The opening lines always hit me hard in my chest, talking to me and reciting to me my own pain and anguish. It was like someone was writing my words for me and it came not only to make my life easier, but also to make me content with being alone. It made me ignorant of those around me and for once, I was at peace:

Every step of the way we walk the line

Your days are numbered, so are mine

Time is pilin' up, we struggle and we scrape

We're all boxed in, nowhere to escape…

Feeling like I was ‘boxed in’ was one of the worst feelings in the world. I had my back up against a metaphorical wall, I was at my wits end and would sit there with my head in my hands wondering why I ever started the darn thing. The people around me, especially the lecturers, were making me believe I wasn’t as smart as the others since I was the only person in my Film class who came from a different university. It was like they had set out to get me out of there before I got my MA degree because I was an outsider. The way this song spoke to me was not only by writing down my words for me though, it was also by its ability to make me feel as if I weren’t alone ever. I wasn’t the only one feeling like this and so, whilst walking around my only place of solace - the bookstore, I would listen to this song on repeat just to feel at ease. I would unclench my jaw, loosen up my shoulders, bend my back a little and take that deep exhale of breath, feeling every single last beat of my heart as my low blood pressure became one with my wondering mind.

City's just a jungle, more games to play

Trapped in the heart of it, trying to get away

I was raised in the country, I been workin' in the town

I been in trouble ever since I set my suitcase down…

The second verse is something that really spoke to me because it really knew how to explain how I was existing in that singular space. The final line of the verse really comes alive when I try to think about what I actually did to make these people hate me. When I realise I didn’t do anything at all, I shut my eyes and the anger and guilt rise together in my chest. I thank God that the song still has verses to go.

Got nothing for you, I had nothing before

Don't even have anything for myself anymore

Sky full of fire, pain pourin' down

Nothing you can sell me, I'll see you around

The fact that my pain too was ‘pourin’ down’ and my sky too was ‘full of fire’ made me feel not only that I wasn’t alone but that the feeling I had of this heartache anger was nothing unusual. This anger made me sorrowful, I stopped eating for a while and then, I started eating so much I put on about 15kg or so. The sound of the song soothed me but for a while and so, in order to feel this high constantly, I would have to put the song on a consecutive repeat. Breathing in and out as if I were about to encounter a yoga pose to the song. The inhalation was always important, it was the only way I could catch the air and hold it inside of me for a while, my head throbbing against the winter wind.

All my powers of expression and thoughts so sublime

Could never do you justice in reason or rhyme

Only one thing I did wrong

Stayed in Mississippi a day too long.

The first chorus was possibly one of the greatest parts of the song because it allowed me to think about how long I had to spend at this institution and why. During my time on my MA, I tried to justify leaving but I just didn’t want to quit - I knew I needed that degree. However, I was looking for other things to do because the university itself made me feel terrible. I ended up not going to my lectures and after I’d handed my papers in, I didn’t go back unless I was handing in or picking up my thesis. I didn’t want to get it wrong. I didn’t want to stay there a day too long.

The song was this place of solace and it was never going to just abruptly end like my BA. I was always that ‘stranger nobody sees’ - I felt unusually invisible and it was just something I wasn’t used to. When he sings the line “I need something strong to distract my mind” I really heard that because it was the first time in my life where I had been so drunk during Christmas that I don’t remember it happening. The only reason I was like that is because I wanted to forget the entire experience of my MA by that point. This song reminded me that I couldn’t just be bitter. I had to be ‘light and free’. I couldn’t stand around and do nothing because ‘everybody’s got to move somewhere’. If they didn’t like me then so be it. When it was all over, Bob Dylan was mostly right because I knew that ‘fortune was waiting to be kind’.

Well, the emptiness is endless, cold as the clay

You can always come back, but you can't come back all the way

I never wanted to come back. I took this line as relative to my graduation for my MA. I did go back for it as my parents insisted they wanted to see my graduate. But then again, I didn’t go back all the way. I went to my graduation, didn’t go to the aftermath, didn’t go to the party. I waved it goodbye and I didn’t stay completely bitter about it. Today, I’m able to make a joke about how much I hated it and how much it hated me. I knew it wasn’t going to last forever, nothing can. Everything good and bad must have an ending. Everything must move on and evolve in some way and heck, my MA did evolve. I made it somewhere I wanted to be, writing article about films for a great website and moving on in life. I was so happy to step out of there to the sound of Bob Dylan singing:

“Things should start to get interesting right about now…”